Henson’s fresh first-person narrative set at a small-town summer-stock theater moves along breezily even as it imparts some fascinating stage history. For almost-13-year-old June Cantrell, aka Junebug, future Broadway star, the highlight of her year has always been helping her theatrical parents put together their productions at the Blue Moon Playhouse, but this summer nothing is the same. Her mother, a talented costume designer, has left to stay with Mama Duvall at her house on the other side of the farm, while her father, a brilliant actor and director, flirts with the gorgeous leading lady. Moreover, Junebug’s self-absorbed older sister, Stella, has assumed the ingénue roll in their production of The Tempest, now that she’s 16, leaving poor Junebug to engineer the thunder, be the backstage gofer and show the new, stuttering, know-it-all apprentice the ropes. “I am in mourning for my life.” Junebug repeats the first line of The Seagull like a mantra, just one of her many histrionic gestures. She is not always likable, though Henson’s work possesses a gutsy authenticity. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-4901-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
A heartfelt but awkwardly paced novel of an orphan finding her way in 1910 Vermont. Harriet, 13, loses her mother when their horse shies from an automobile. Still barely comprehending her loss, she must also leave the house she and her mother shared to go live with her dead father Walter’s gruff sister. Sarah has had a hard life, and it shows, as she teaches Harry how to churn, gather hay, and find eggs, with little patience for her niece’s longing for school, or for the colt she loves, foal of the mare who died when her mother did. Sarah hated Harry’s mother, too, implying that pregnancy forced her beloved Walter into marriage. Harry doesn’t know the family story, but visits to the cemetery and the stories of another uncle help her piece together her past and offer her insight into Sarah’s brittleness. The emotional transitions are abrupt; the story predictably comes out all right when Harry’s school tuition gets paid, and when she and Sarah recognize their ties in blood and feeling. Readers will be comforted by the cozy denouement, and by Haas’s evocative descriptions of Vermont in the early years of this century. (Fiction. 9-14)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-688-16260-6
Page Count: 185
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
Small for her age, bright 14-year-old Sylvie is only just experiencing the first longings of puberty. Sylvie hopes her lifelong friendship with Carl will blossom into something more like what her bold new friend, alpha girl Miranda, means when she says “boyfriend.” But Carl’s object of desire is a boy at his new school, a soccer star on whom he has an intense crush, and he is moody and withdrawn with Sylvie. Wilson competently gets inside the world of younger teens and displays her usual sure hand with details (Miranda’s cheerful theft of her parents’ vodka, the quirks and foibles of parents), but there’s some predictability to the plot. Paul is furious when he discovers Carl’s feelings for him, and Carl takes out his subsequent humiliation on the Glass House sanctuary he and Sylvie have shared for years. Miranda’s audacious response to Carl’s classmates’ homophobia is a bright spot at the end, as is Sylvie’s recognition of the value of simple friendship; Carl’s parents’ bland suggestion that he might be going through a phase seems awkward and unnecessary. Mixed, but diverting. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59643-242-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
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